President jacques Chirac and Premier Lionel Jospin inaugurated a permanent exhibition of primitive art works at the Louvre Museum on April 13rd 2000. 117 sculptures from Africa, Oceania, Asia and America are being exhibited over 1400 square metres in the pavilion of Sessions in the Louvre pendinf the opening of a museum near the Eiffel Tower in 2004.
President Chirac said he was much happy to see masterpieces from other foreign cultures in the Louvre. «For a long time non-Western art pieces entered our collections as a result of painful circumstances set against a colonization background», he stressed.
«This was for Europe a time of conquest and economic expansion but also a time of humiliation and suffering for countries under the rule of colonization», he added. «We have progressively built relations based on mutual respect, dialogue and exchanges with these countries and the Western world has finally taken the measure of the cultural dimension of these civilisations,» the French President noted. Officials of the Louvre Museum were quite reticent about the idea of housing primitive art works destined to the new Museum devoted to this particular domain. President Chirac recalled that there was no greater injustice than to refuse any nation the right to have an access to its history. «That's why I wished to create a museum of Primitive Arts as well as to ensure a permanent presence of such artworks from far away countries in the Louvre», the president stressed.
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